Last summer, as I walked along a tidy residential street in Vancouver’s upscale Fairview Slopes, I wondered whether I had been given the wrong address. As a young journalist whose interests are outside mainstream journalism, I had decided to volunteer for a few months at Adbusters, the subversive quarterly magazine dedicated to undermining the kind… Continue reading Biting the Hand that Misleads Us
Category: Summer 1997
Back of the Rack
t seems peculiar to be in McDonald’s. How ironic to be sitting with Irshad Manji, an East African immigrant-feminist-lesbian, in a burger empire that doesn’t celebrate diversity but instead sets out to make the whole world appreciate a Big Mac. In this homogenous environment, it’s refreshing to think of the diverse views she presents in… Continue reading Back of the Rack
The Dying Art of Talking Crop
On the outskirts of Winnipeg, stalks of golden prarie wheat rustle in the summer breeze, and dust blows between the stubble in the fields where fresh-cut sheaves stand like miniature teepees. Dozens of grain elevators along the horizon cast long, skinny shadows as the sun lowers in the western sky. In the city, a disturbance… Continue reading The Dying Art of Talking Crop
Out on a Limb
“I’m not really a magazine editor,” Stevie Cameron announces firmly over the lectern. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I have to pattern myself after you guys.” The audience laughs. It’s September 1996, and a hundred-odd members of the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors are sitting over the remains of a buffet lunch. Many know… Continue reading Out on a Limb
When Homemaker’s met Sally
It’s just about 7:30 on the night before Halloween, and the 30th anniversary gala of Homemaker’s magazine (now known as HM is beginning to roll at Guvernment, a trendy club in downtown Toronto. Sally Armstrong, editor-in-chief of Homemaker’s, for the past eight years, is working the room wearing an iridescent-green wrap-around blouse, a short black… Continue reading When Homemaker’s met Sally